The Cutting Room Floor
by Laura S'mora
Summary: As a matter of interest, some drabbles.
1. Harry Demonstrates the Use of Italics

Okay, I was going through old stuff on my computer and I stumbled accross several pieces I had written or considered incorporating into my various fics that won't work now, either forcanonical reasons or just because I no longer like the ideas presented in them. But I decided topublish them as a matter of interest,because some of them are rather clever, if I do say so myself. Some incorporate HBP, but a good deal of them are pre-HBP or even pre-OotP. Some are diatribes from a certain character's perspective, some are significant portions of a story I don't have the ambition to finish. But you never know, I may decide to expound on some of them should someone request it.

That being said, I give you piece number one: this first one I wrote from Harry's perspective regarding all the comments about his immense thick-headedness, pre-HBP, of course. Not really meant to be taken all that seriously---it just made me laugh.

* * *

**Harry Demonstrates the Use of Italics**

I think it's funny that everyone laughs at me and Ron for being 'blind'. Actually it's not funny, its bloody irritating. Who honestly thinks that Ron hasn't noticed how the thought of Hermione so much as talking to another boy makes him want to toss his biscuits? Not that we've ever talked about it, but a lot of things go unspoken between me and Ron. He knows how he feels about Hermione—I'm fairly sure she feels the same way about him, but it'd be a bit rich for me to give him any sort of relationship advice, don't you think? And besides I'm only guessing.

Hermione _can_ keep secrets from me; she has—big ones, on several occasions, it would _appear_ to me that she's got feelings for Ron, but I don't know as I'd bet much gold on that wager, just because my social instincts for these things are probably about as keen as those of a toad.

And speaking of 'blindness' I'm not, contrary to popular belief, some bumbling tosser who walks around with his eyes crossed. Yes—I've _seen_ Ginny Weasley. I know she's pretty. I do, but if you think that I can't just _not_ think about someone in that way you're severely underestimating my heightened state of personal awareness and powerful mental discipline.

So she's pretty and funny and smart and cool—big deal!—is my emotional dinner plate not full enough for everyone yet? Is it not enough that I'm supposed to do the entire world's dirty work and murder some wizard that I don't even have the emotional energy to hate anymore unless I've had a decent night's sleep and a good hearty breakfast because he's taken so much from me that it's almost _comical?_

Does anyone else not think it's a brilliant idea to go falling head over arse for a member of my adoptive family at this point who quite obviously doesn't want to fancy me anymore and is dating my dormmate? How many people would be chuffed with me if I just skived off my 'fate duties' for the next century or so to go fall in _love_ and make out with my girlfriend and just let the Deatheaters pick off the population one by one because—oh _FINE—_I admit it! That's what would happen! I'd fall so hard I'd never get up again—never get out of bed. I'd turn to mush—sentimental, sappy mush.

Why why _why—_would I fancy that? Because she's _pretty_? Because she's _funny_? So _pretty_—so _funny_ that I could never bring myself to hurt anyone again? and that I'd be a defenseless, self-indulgent prat who couldn't keep his hands off her long enough to hold a _wand_? I _don't_ think...

So you can all just take those _knowing_ smiles and _furtive _looks from off your face because you're messing with my head while I'm under more pressure than you even like to _think_ about.


	2. Thought It's Truly a Sin

A/N: Lordisa help me, I never thought it would happen to me but I've done it---I've just shipped Snape with someone. I have no sympathy for his character, rest assured, or hers either for that matter, but blame the Velvet Underground for inspiring me to write some backstory to these two baddies many many months ago. The song is Pale Blue Eyes, and it's more beautiful by far than the sick imitation of caring that exists between these two sorry excuses for humanity, and the verse in question is this:

_Thought of you as my mountaintop,_

_Thought of you as my peak,_

_Thought of you as everything_

_I've had but couldn't keep._**

* * *

**

**Though It's Truly a Sin**

Severus Snape sat in his leather armchair for many minutes after Narcissa and her sister had departed; traces of _something_ lingered in all the places her pale, sweet-smelling body had brushed against his own. Sometimes he still got that strange, warm-blooded feeling of raging lust when he thought about her, that thing that colored his face like nothing else ever could; sometimes the thought of her made him weep, but more often than not, it seemed, she just made him a little mad. An Unbreakable Vow, for the love of evil! _What_ would possess him to make such a hasty and potentially detrimental commitment? She would. He scowled and stood up from his chair, the faraway location of his mind reminding him most appallingly of something James Potter would do. He shuddered.

If he knew what it meant to be whipped, he would know that that's exactly what he was—indeed, in a way, that's exactly what he always had been. Poor, whipped little Severus Snape, wanting a woman he was neither wealthy enough to seduce nor seductive enough to compensate for the lack of wealth.

Not that he pined. He wasn't Potter for cruelty's sake! Once upon a time, Narcissa had led him to believe that he could make her happy—for all of a single, silvery night he had lived in a glorious dream with a beautiful woman and no one else, but that was all it was: a dream, and he knew it. So what do you do when you don't succeed? When the woman you love runs off with Moneybags? Deny, deny, deny, you were even trying. Befriend the Moneybags in question—don't shrink from seeing them together, happy and contented, and treat their son as if he were your own. Just be careful never to linger too long on wishing he were. That was sinful, as far as he was concerned. But to this day, her pale blue eyes to him were the symbol of all the sweetest things in life of which he'd only ever had the smallest taste, and of which men like Lucius slept beside every night without knowing, without appreciating so much as the warmth of a woman's body.

He sighed and waved his wand around the room, floating the empty glasses down the hall and into the kitchen, not caring that they each cuffed Pettigrew on the head as he tried to make his way through the door into the study.

"What did they want?" asked Pettigrew, sneaking furtively—purely out of habit. Snape's jaw clenched and then unclenched—he would have to speak to the Dark Lord, no doubt, for his clumsy 'assistant' was waxing audacious in his ill-disguised nosiness.

If he could have his way all women would be like Narcissa: soft, compliant, quiet, and beautiful—then it wouldn't matter that they were stupid, then they couldn't manipulate and come charging into everything _insisting_ on equality and a fair share of things they couldn't handle in the first place. And when he said 'women', by the way, he meant to include Pettigrew: the pathetic lump would do well not to meddle in things he was incapable of understanding.

"Go away, Wormtail," he said airily. He took no further notice of him after that, and did not even know whether Pettigrew stayed or continued to sit there in the room being pathetic, too lost was he in contemplating this morning's interesting, though not entirely unanticipated, turn of events.

When all was said and done he couldn't help the small flickerings of satisfaction which lapped at his insides when he thought of Lucius in Azkaban, or of Narcissa, all alone in her great manor. Look where money had gotten the pair of them, and look where brains and talent had gotten him: a comfortable spot in the pocket of the greatest wizard of all time and the Defense Against the Dark Arts post at last. Narcissa had learned fairly early into her marriage with Lucius that money wasn't everything.

"It only conceals... other things." She said woefully to him one winter night a few years ago when Lucius was off somewhere on business.

"What does it conceal?" He had asked, unable to contain his silky glee, "What is the matter, Narcissa?"

She had demurred then, flushing and muttering something indistinctly, looking rather ashamed. He felt a bit sick, and said with a deceptively mild drawl, "Does he hurt you?"

She turned pinker still.

"Does he not respect you? Does he force you—"

She gave a short, harsh laugh, "If only that were the problem!"

Severus moved closer to her then, tentatively, but enough so that she could see that even if Lucius was not satisfactorily fazed by her intense beauty he was still, and she looked up at him then with tears shining in her eyes.

"I love my husband." She said, her voice hardly quavering.

"I know." He whispered, his fingers brushing her cheek softly, "And you are nothing more than a friend to me."

She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek closer into his hand as tears were squeezed onto the pearly skin of her elegant cheeks. And that night he had brought her comfort, and tried not to know only too well that her thoughts were not there— that her pale blue eyes were not seeing the same man who was on her mind.

In the morning she cried quietly in naked shame, and Severus did all he could to make her stop it.

"There is nothing to be ashamed of, Narcissa," he said, in a very convincing lie.

"I am married!" She sobbed. He pressed a finger to her lips to quiet her.

"Which only proves this meant nothing more than comfort. You are only a woman who misses her husband, and I... am only a trusted friend."

Narcissa had unknowingly intoxicated him many times before, and he had done the same to her with aching deliberateness and careful manipulation. He was sick—he knew it.

Sometimes, he thought perhaps he loved her. Sometimes it felt more like hatred. Sometimes it was a happy control, sometimes it was cruelty—but it was always madness. It was always ill-advised, and it was never real. Narcissa's name, hissing from his lips was the very pinnacle of pleasure, it was the height of all possession, of every good thing he'd ever had, but that would never be his. And it was truly, truly a sin.

* * *

Here's the rest of the song:

_Sometimes I feel so happy_

_Sometimes I feel so sad_

_Sometimes I feel so happy_

_But mostly you just make me mad_

_Baby you just make me mad._

_Chorus: Linger on, your pale blue eyes_

_Linger on, your pale blue eyes_

_Thought of you as my mountaintop_

_Thought of you as my peak_

_Thought of you as everything_

_I've had but couldn't keep_

_I've had but couldn't keep_

_Chorus_

_If I could make the world as pure_

_And strange as what I see_

_I'd put you in the mirror_

_I put in front of me_

_I put in front of me_

_Chorus_

_Skip a life completely_

_Stuff it in a cup_

_She said 'Money is like us in time_

_It lies but can't stand up'_

_Down for you is up_

_Chorus_

_It was good, what we did yesterday_

_And I'd do it once again_

_The fact that you are married_

_Only proves you're my best friend_

_Though it's truly, truly a sin._


	3. Wellitwasjustalittlegiveup

It's been a year since he left, and a little bird's told Harry that Ginny's starting to doubt, starting to wonder if she should give up and move on... or not.

* * *

**Wellitwasjustalittlegiveup **

Harrystrode over the lawn towards her and before she had time to wonder he wound her up in his arms, and her feet were lifted from the ground as he engaged a sickening display of enthusiasm for her neck.

"I need you," he muttered gruffly, his voice muffled and inaudible to anyone but her, "I need you to stay alive."

His breath caught in his throat as if he meant to clarify the ambiguity and then changed his mind. They held each other like that for a very long time, eyes shut tightly, trying to forget about the rest of the world for just a few seconds longer, but the moment slipped from their grasp and they wrenched themselves slowly apart. His eyes were red and a little puffy, and they had this heaving, determined look in them, willing her to understand what he couldn't really say. And she glared back, willing him to know that she did. And yet a part of her that was weak still wished that he was, too, and that he _couldn't_ leave her.

Then he put his hand behind her head and pulled her in, so that their foreheads touched and their lips hovered dangerously close,

"Please Ginny," he said, "Please wait. Nothing I've done will be worth it if you give up on me now."

...How had she ever doubted him? How could she have been so foolish as to wonder if she'd imagined this—this _thing_ that was so _real_ it could not have been born in anything but the kind of living that was better than dreaming. Shudders thrilling up and down her body as the sweet intensity reached breaking point.

"I wasn't—" she kissed him fiercely, "I just—" and tried to talk to him at the same time and the result was incoherence and unsatisfying moments that ended before they started.

"Wellitwasjustalittlegiveup_," _she mumbled finally, and there was only a brief moment in which he smiled before his lips descended on hers and she met him halfway.

* * *

A/N:A moment I tried _so hard_ to include in In the House of the Quick and the Hungry, in about four different chapters, but it simply wouldn't work. In the end that was alright though, because I realized that the reason it kept not working with the story was that neither of them were _quite_ in keeping with the Harry and Ginny I had been writing. But in character or not, I wanted to put it out there. 


End file.
